This one is all me. It's based on actual calls I took for a local radio show in Salamanca in the 1990's I did by that name. As far as I know, that station and it's popular call in show in which people sold household items, some of which were very unusual and often unintentionally funny, went off the air years ago. This is unscripted, mainly drawn from memory, and I hope you enjoy it. If it gets some traction, I've a few more crazy items for sale!

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore is a spin-off of The Daily Show, which featured Wilmore as a recurring contributor billed as the “Senior Black Correspondent”. It premiered on January 19, 2015 on Comedy Central, and airs Mondays through Thursdays at 11:30 PM (EST) following The Daily Show. It serves as a replacement for The Colbert Report, which aired in the same time-slot from October 2005 until December 2014. The show has been described as a combination of The Daily Show and Politically Incorrect. Each episode begins with Wilmore’s scripted take on the news followed by skits related to the most controversial topic of the night, then in the 3rd segment, a panel discussion with his guests, 2 of which are show writers and/or show "reporters," and the third seated always on Larry's left, a guest from the entertainment world.

The Nightly Show was slightly different than the Daily Show and more geared for examining serious topics not unlike a more condensed version of Real Time With Bill Maher and/or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a show often compared to VICE News with a dash of snark.

Larry Wilmore is an intelligent comic who has a unique take on the world, especially in relation to how the vulnerable have been treated, notably the divide between the races in the United States. He raised awareness of the Flint Water Crisis and has never been afraid to take on the oppressors, whether it be the governor of Michigan or especially pundits like Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly, two of the most famously racist in the cable news universe.

Wilmore raised eyebrows in some of his rather brutally honest comments at the White Correspondence Dinner, president Obama's last such event in which the comic was invited to headline. He did not disappoint, and certainly made headlines with an ending tribute to the president that some regarded as controversial because of his use of the N word in relation to Obama.

Fans were hoping Wilmore's appearance and headline making comedy set at the Correspondents Dinner would have boosted the show's cume, but according to Comedy Central, the ratings have not been to their liking, and pulled the plug on the groundbreaking news satire show abruptly this summer, it's final episode airing Thursday, August 18.

In this writer's opinion, The Nightly Show gained a strong following and examined subjects often ignored by the corporate, white-skewed news and entertainment sector, which often relegates people of color away from topics regarded as sensitive, such as news and commentary, though comedic, of the racial divide in this country. Wilmore and his cast-mates may have both angered and frightened those in power at Comedy Central, as some have done notably on MSNBC, a network now dominated by the conservative Comcast Cable giant with rather controversial departures such as Melissa Harris-Perry and Ed Schultz among others. The network has relegated their remaining anchors of color out of prime-time and just on weekends. Joy Reid taking Melissa Harris Perry's 2 hour slot on Sat and Sun mornings and sparsely, Rev. Al Sharpton, their remaining more controversial figure for an hour near the break of dawn on Sundays where he can be a less controversial token.

The Nightly Show raised awareness of the income disparity among African Americans, famously in a sketch where cast-member and reporter Jordan Carlos learned the hard way what a food desert was, where 13 million people live too far from grocery stores providing organic and healthy food, noting that in Camden, NJ, one has to walk 5 miles to find a grocery store. Bodegas and convenience stores, which charge a substantial markup on much less nutritious foodstuffs, are the norm in many of what whites call "urban" areas. This reminds me of my time in Real Estate, where that term was used as code for blockbusting and warning white home buyers to avoid such neighborhoods when calling about housing in New Jersey.

At the very least, The Nightly Show deserves an Emmy for it's unique, brutally truthful take on racism, political corruption, income disparity, and especially the Flint Water Crisis. I believe the show was removed from Comedy Central not so much for ratings, but because it's politics upset the powers that be...and we all know Republicans dominate the ownership of these networks...and republicans are famously not on board with any of The Nightly Show's topics or their revelation of truth.

Larry's fellow cast-mates included some of comedy's best and brightest. Mike Yard is a veteran stand-up comic whose no holds barred style of humor often stole the show every time he appeared in many sketches. He's intelligent, with a degree in mathematics and a sardonic wit that is demonstrated well on his podcast, Yardtalk, heard weekly on Soundcloud. I predict he will have his own television show in the near future.

Robin Thede, Rory Albanese, Holly Walker, Jordan Carlos, Ricky Velez, Grace Parra and Franchesca Ramsey are all brilliant comics in their own right. Rory and Mike were famously featured in a recurring point-counterpoint sketch called Pardon The Integration where Larry and Rory would always make Mike the fall guy...on this week's final PTI, Mike had the last laugh.

These are some of the best talent in any comedy show and it is this writer's hope that they will find much success in the near future as they deserve to move up as they have given us so much.

Larry Wilmore and his fellow writers and castmates for nearly 2 years gave us a look at America that made us laugh and made us question why we still have not evolved as a society regarding race. They were an important voice that has been silenced...but hopefully not for long. Perhaps with the help of their fans, including me, that voice will rise again.

Bernie Sanders and John Boehner once again meet in a DC bar & talk about their exploits. Bernie's working on stopping Trump, Boehner is helping fellow GOP candidates on the road. #Comedy #Skit. #VoiceImpressions

Do you have a bone up your ass? No? Do you WANT a bone up your ass? Well, worry not. We have the bone that'll make ya moan. TRUMPlugs. Discover the hard rubber & love the shove of a Trump Plug. There's no backdoor action more filling than a Trump diddly dildo dilling. One size fits all. Trump Plug...get stuffed today!

Me as my heroes Anthony Bourdain and guest Morgan Freeman in a parody of Parts Unknown. In Farts Unknown, Uncle Tony judges cheese farts with the ASSistance of Morgan Freeman. 2 minutes of fun. No harm intended to either Bourdain or cheeses.

Trump, while in Scotland, ignored the fact that Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, and praised #brexit. Citizens of the great nation of Scotland responded with some of the funniest insults I've heard in a long while. Here they are.

Deities are a construct of the mind trying to compartmentalize The Grid. Check out "What The Bleep Do We Know." Book or film. Separation is an illusion. We are all one, as much as we don't want or even like to admit it. God is not up there, out there, over there. God is within everyone. God is not a person. God is The Grid. Source. Universal Soul. Ocean of Love. Call it what you may, but it has more meaning being The Nameless. Giving it a model or a form is like trying to put the Sun on the head of a pin. That's never going to work out. Quiet the mind, feel the power within.

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, reveals how a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital "crap" via social media.

Journalist Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, adds another perspective: “The rise of idiot America today represents--for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power--the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert.”

“There’s a pervasive suspicion of rights, privileges, knowledge and specialization,” says Catherine Liu, the author of American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique and a film and media studies professor at University of California. The very mission of universities has changed, argues Liu. “We don’t educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs.”

Part of the reason for the rising anti-intellectualism can be found in the declining state of education in the U.S. compared to other advanced countries:

After leading the world for decades in 25-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly 50% of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are foreigners, most of whom are returning to their home countries;

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students. A surprising 77% didn't know that George Washington was the first President; couldn't name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence; and only 2.8% of the students actually passed the citizenship test. Along similar lines, the Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey and only 3.5% of students passed the civics test;

According to the National Research Council report, only 28% of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13% of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or "intelligent design;"

18% of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, according to a Gallup poll;

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities report on education shows that the U.S. ranks second among all nations in the proportion of the population aged 35-64 with a college degree, but 19th in the percentage of those aged 25-34 with an associate or high school diploma, which means that for the first time, the educational attainment of young people will be lower than their parents;

74% of Republicans in the U.S. Senate and 53% in the House of Representatives deny the validity of climate change despite the findings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific organization in the world;

According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 68% of public school children in the U.S. do not read proficiently by the time they finish third grade. And the U.S. News & World reported that barely 50% of students are ready for college level reading when they graduate;

According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important;"

According to the National Endowment for the Arts report in 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later only 67% did. And more than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book--fiction or nonfiction--over the course of a year. The proportion of 17 year olds who read nothing (unless required by school ) has doubled between 1984-2004;

Gallup released a poll indicating 42 percent of Americans still believe God created human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago;

A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously.

In American schools, the culture exalts the athlete and good-looking cheerleader. Well-educated and intellectual students are commonly referred to in public schools and the media as "nerds," "dweebs," "dorks," and "geeks," and are relentlessly harassed and even assaulted by the more popular "jocks" for openly displaying any intellect. These anti-intellectual attitudes are not reflected in students in most European or Asian countries, whose educational levels have now equaled and and will surpass that of the U.S. And most TV shows or movies such as The Big Bang Theory depict intellectuals as being geeks if not effeminate.

John W. Traphagan ,Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas, argues the problem is that Asian countries have core cultural values that are more akin to a cult of intelligence and education than a cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. In Japan, for example, teachers are held in high esteem and normally viewed as among the most important members of a community. There is suspicion and even disdain for the work of teachers that occurs in the U.S. Teachers in Japan typically are paid significantly more than their peers in the U.S. The profession of teaching is one that is seen as being of central value in Japanese society and those who choose that profession are well compensated in terms of salary, pension, and respect for their knowledge and their efforts on behalf of children.

In addition, we do not see in Japan significant numbers of the types of religious schools that are designed to shield children from knowledge about basic tenets of science and accepted understandings of history--such as evolutionary theory or the religious views of the Founding Fathers, who were largely deists--which are essential to having a fundamental understanding of the world, Traphagan contends. The reason for this is because in general Japanese value education, value the work of intellectuals, and see a well-educated public with a basic common knowledge in areas of scientific fact, math, history, literature, etc. as being an essential foundation to a successful democracy.

We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation.

Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times argues that the anti-intellectual elitism is not an elitism of wisdom, education, experience or knowledge. The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Too often it’s a combined elite of the anti-intellectuals and the conspiracy followers – not those who can voice the most cogent, most coherent response. Together they forment a rabid culture of anti-rationalism where every fact is suspect; every shadow holds a secret conspiracy. Rational thought is the enemy. Critical thinking is the devil’s tool.

Keller also notes that the herd mentality takes over online; the anti-intellectuals become the metaphorical equivalent of an angry lynch mob when anyone either challenges one of the mob beliefs or posts anything outside the mob’s self-limiting set of values.

Keller blames this in part to the online universe that “skews young, educated and attentive to fashions.” Fashion, entertainment, spectacle, voyeurism – we’re directed towards trivia, towards the inconsequential, towards unquestioning and blatant consumerism. This results in intellectual complacency. People accept without questioning, believe without weighing the choices, join the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is too hard work. Thinking takes too much time: it gets in the way of the immediacy of the online experience.

Reality TV and pop culture presented in magazines and online sites claim to provide useful information about the importance of The Housewives of [you name the city] that can somehow enrich our lives. After all, how else can one explain the insipid and pointless stories that tout divorces, cheating and weight gain? How else can we explain how the Kardashians,or Paris Hilton are known for being famous for being famous without actually contributing anything worth discussion? The artificial events of their lives become the mainstay of populist media to distract people from the real issues and concerns facing us.

The current trend of increasing anti-intellectualism now establishing itself in politics and business leadership, and supported by a declining education system should be a cause for concern for leaders and the general population,one that needs to be addressed now.

Happiness is a decision....it's one I struggle with all the time. One way I can at least go in that direction without "substances" is gratitude...counting the things that actually work for me in life. Being creative is another way, getting immersed in what one enjoys the most. Simple things, like communing with nature or listening to music that evokes happiness or contentment. Gratitude, creativity, clearing the mind of clutter, caring less about the mundane and more about what's working. It all starts with gratitude...and that can be hard sometimes, especially if you are in a relationship that is draining or you feel isolated. Sometimes we attract drama by putting out negative energy into the universe. I am guilty of that...especially with what's going on in the country and in our communities, where things are a lot less "communal."

We're all tied into the Grid. That's the Source. You can ask that source for help by clearing the mind and focusing on what you need, knowing that Source does not "get" doubt or No. Whatever you need in life, if you ask for it, you negate it by not having faith it will happen. It's not in any way tied to religion...that's just dogma that takes you on a roundabout journey from where you need to go. Faith gets us up in the morning. Hoping for a better day and then embracing that it could be a better day rather than "this is going to be a shit day" is a good start on the journey to happiness. Look at how many rich people have a scowl on their face...you'd think they'd be happy, right? They're not because their goals in life are temporal & they're living in fear. They are not grateful...many think they're owed. That's the key...being thankful for what you have, even if by others' standards, it isn't much. Wealth isn't what you possess...it's what's in your heart. When you're thankful, you can start looking outside yourself and maybe helping someone else without the condition they help you back...those are the keys to happiness. Gratitude, clearing the mind and altruism. Be Cool, Be Nobody's Fool & Don't Dismiss the Bliss.

Bernie, tired from campaigning, stops in a bar where John Boehner is knocking back a few cold ones. They talk the race, Cruz, Clinton, Marijuana, and the difference between high and buzzed. 5 minutes of silliness from two politicians who likely would not talk to one another except in this setting.

The soul is pure energy, but coherent. Our bodies are matter, a slower vibrational state of energy, and is an organism. Think of it as traveling around in a late model car, with all its issues, contrivances and limitations. The mind is part of both the "car" and the soul. We are three. Soul (higher mind), Mind and body. Three states of existence, each at varying levels, the soul being the highest (part of the Divine), the mind as the middle, the body as the lowest level. It is our nature to want to ascend, but we are often trained to focus on the lowest level of our existence...just the body. It's really the other way around. Can you imagine being nearly totally separate from the body? Stephen Hawking, for example, is in a state where the body has nearly fallen away, and so there's just mind and higher mind. His focus seems to us has been on the mind alone, but how do we know that he hasn't ventured into higher mind? Maybe his understanding of the cosmological nature of existence has been influenced by his connection with higher mind. It is a goal of mine to try reaching higher mind. Should not be too difficult since the "car" I'm riding in is a hoopty.